Nighttime Snacking Habit

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Related Episodes:

• Boredom Eating
• Eating Behavior Triggers
• My Emotional Eating Habit
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Full Episode Transcript:

Nighttime Snacking Habit

 

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. I hope you’re having a lovely week so far. I’m recording this on Monday, so the week has barely started, however I am telling myself that this is going to be a lovely week. Because honestly, I feel like every week is a lovely week. And I no longer despise or dread Mondays, which is amazing in my opinion.

Before I jump into today’s topic of a nighttime snacking habit, I do want to just share a little bit with you about how I made Mondays something to look forward to. I have 3 different things I do, which I know you’ll find useful yourself.

So, the first is that I really love my work and I remind myself often of what it is that I do love about my work. Now just a side note, if you DON’T love your work, and can’t find a single thing about your day that you can enjoy, what does your work provide for you financially, to support those you love or things you get enjoyment out of? That’s just a different way to look at your work.

The second thing is, I also think thoughts like “I get to do” these certain work tasks, rather than “I have to”. That shift is huge. When you start out or a sentence with “I get to”, it feels like an opportunity and that promotes such a positive feeling.

When you start a thought or a sentence with I have to, it feels more of an obligation and you can almost imagine yourself just dragging your feet, right?

The third thing is I make sure to schedule some really fun or enjoyable things for the week that I get to look forward to. This can either be time spent with my husband Paul enjoying a summer evening on the back deck, with some really great conversation. It can be looking forward to meeting up with my group of friends for our weekly track workouts after work. It could also be looking forward to meeting up with some friends to do a hill workout.

Yes, we like to run up and down hills multiple times, because we know it makes our legs stronger for races. As torturous as that sounds, I’m telling you, it goes by really quickly when you are having good conversation while running up down the hills.

So I really like to mix up activity and also some chill time. I do enjoy reading, so I like to have at least one book that I am currently reading, and one book that’s on the next to read list, available to me in my house.

So those are my tips for making Mondays super enjoyable, rather than a day of the week that you dread.

Alright, now to jump into our topic today of a night-time snacking habit. So, my husband Paul will definitely tease and say that I have a nighttime snacking habit. But I don’t because although it may seem like a habit, I intentionally choose to eat nighttime snacks for a few reasons, which I’ll explain.

I don’t eat super large meals throughout the day, but instead I tend to eat many smaller meals, and my nighttime snack is one of those. If I don’t eat something at night, I will wake up super hungry and not be able to fall back to sleep.

I also know my body really well and I know that if I didn’t eat those extra calories at night, I would not be able to maintain a healthy body weight. I actually need those calories for the amount of activity that I do.

So, I want to talk about the components that go into a night-time snacking habit so that you easily understand your nighttime snacking habit. And just to clarify, a night-time snacking habit is only something to be “treated” if you don’t want to be snacking at night because you are trying to lose weight or because you are trying to be more deliberate about what you’re eating for health or weight management reasons.

Okay, so first I want to just define what a habit actually is, what you need for a habit to actually occur. A habit is just a behavior that has become automatic. You’re not necessarily thinking intentionally about doing the behavior, it just happens.

For a habit to occur, you first need the actual behavior to occur. For a behavior to occur, you need some sort of a cue or prompt or trigger. The behavior itself needs to be doable. Meaning if it’s impossible to do, you won’t go forward with the behavior. That makes sense right?

And then there needs to be some sort of a reward in order to motivate you to do the behavior in the first place. That reward can be experiencing pleasure, even if very short term, avoiding pain or discomfort or even danger, or saving energy.

So as long as you have some sort of a cue, the behavior is actually doable, but especially if it’s easily doable, and some sort of reward immediately after the behavior, you’ve set yourself up to actually go forward with the behavior. This is called the behavior sequence.

When the behavior sequence is done multiple times in the same or similar context, which means time, place or situation or circumstance, this is when habit starts to form. The more this is repeated, the stronger this habit cycle gets and the more likely the behavior is to become a true habit.

Now, regarding a nighttime snacking habit, there’s going to be some sort of a cue or prompt or trigger. The snack needs to be readily available, and you need to actually be able to physically put the snack in your mouth, chew and swallow.

And then there needs to be some sort of a reward. That can be a very short term pleasure. So when something has a tasty flavor, think of that as being the short term pleasure.

If you’re wondering why you have a night time snacking habit, it’s because something at some point cued or triggered you, the snack was readily available, and it provided some sort of a reward. Once this actually becomes a habit, meaning once the sequence has been done frequently enough, that it’s now automatic, you feel like you don’t have any control. It can all occur quickly, without you necessarily thinking about your actions.

So, what are some examples of things that can trigger you or prompt you to go for the snack? It can be something like a person that you live with is eating a snack at night, and you see this person eating the snack and think hey that looks like a really good idea. So that may have started the behavior of eating a snack with this person.

I think this is especially common, because we enjoy doing things with each other, with other human beings. We see someone doing something and want to take part in it. Or sometimes that person can offer it to you and you don’t want to say “no.” People pleasers, I’m talking to you specifically. I think we all people-please to some extent though.

Negative emotions or uncomfortable emotions can also trigger you. So, emotions such as sadness or anxiety. Also, emotions like boredom or even fatigue.

Even just seeing the snack can trigger you. So that’s called a visual cue. Also, hunger signals can trigger you.

For me, I get hunger signals at about 8:00 at night, and that’s often my cue. However, I want to just talk about the subtle difference here between being intentional and deliberate about snacking at night versus it being more of a habitual thing.

So when I get my hunger signals, I make a decision. I decide if the amount of activity I did throughout the day most likely exceeded the amount of calories I eat. Basically, I ask myself “am I truly hungry, and do I need the calories, or is this something that is more of just a desire?”

I know my body very well, so almost always it is that I really could use the calories and am truly hungry. Therefore, I make the decision to act upon those hunger signals and eat something.

Now, when I became aware that I was emotionally eating throughout the day, and at night, and I was deliberately trying to change my eating habits and also lose some weight, I made different choices as far as acting upon the hunger signals. So, at the time, I didn’t know as much about all of this stuff as I do now, and if I really felt hungry at night, I would choose the snack, like grape tomatoes. So something that was filling, but also very low calorie.

Also, I knew that I wasn’t going to overdo it on grape tomatoes, because as much as I do like grape or cherry tomatoes, they’re not nearly as delicious as homemade peanut butter cookies for example.

Eventually, I did learn some actual tactics to break the emotional eating habit, mainly on my own, which led to that true nighttime snacking habit I had, being broken. So for me back then, what cued my nighttime snacking habit was the uncomfortable emotions…mainly anxiety.

These are all things that you learn about yourself when we work closely together in one-on-one coaching, but you can still start catching on a little bit by just asking yourself some questions.

And as far as other cues like negative or uncomfortable emotions, or someone offering you food at night, these are things that can absolutely be addressed. Emotional eating is one of the biggest things that I help career women with. Also, there are ways to get around the whole people- pleasing thing, so that this is no longer affecting your eating behaviors.

Okay so moving on to the behavior itself. So, with nighttime snacking, it needs to be easy to be able to actually get the snack and eat it. So, if you are at home, and there are snacks in the kitchen, it’s going to be easy to do the behavior, right? It’s going to be even easier to do the behavior if the snack is right in front of you. You just need to reach out your arm grab it, and put it in your mouth, chew and swallow.

Also, when someone in your household is snacking at night and they offer you the snack and hold it out to you, it’s going to be very easy for you to reach out, grab it and eat it.

Now certainly, you can take all the snacks out of your home, but is this really realistic? I would say that this is not necessary either. Because number one, I can help you with this.

But let’s just say that you don’t work with me, and you feel that you’ve tried everything else, maybe consider taking the sugary foods or whatever it is that you tend to snack on at night out of your home.

A better option is to put it out of sight. It’s still there, and you know it’s still there, but this is going to be much more realistic. Especially for the rest of your life. There’s always going to be foods available to you that might be tempting for you, when you think about them. I mean think about it, you can easily hop in your car or call an Uber and go to the grocery store to get the ice cream that’s not in your house.

So, it’s much better to be able to think about the ice cream, have a desire for it, but learned to not act upon that desire, so you break the habit, but also over time, the desire intensity lessens too. It’s also better to put the ice cream out of sight if you need to, especially at the beginning, to make it a little bit easier for yourself to not automatically go for the ice cream when it’s such a strong habit in the beginning.

You’re not going to be hiding the ice cream forever, because you’re going to be learning how to break that habit, if that’s a habit that you want to break. And I’m just using ice cream as an example. They’re just going to be helping yourself as much as you can initially, as you are actively breaking the habit cycle.

Alright, so we talked about the cue or trigger, and the behavior itself having to be easy to do. Now onto the reward.

For humans to do behavior, there must be a reason to do the behavior, right? At least initially when it’s not just an automatic habit yet. So researchers believe those reasons to be something called the motivational triad. Meaning there are three reasons why humans go forward with certain behaviors. To increase pleasure, avoid pain, discomfort, or danger, and conserve energy.

These are all things that were very important for survival, but also researchers feel that they motivate us even today with things that are not necessarily survival based. So even small things like eating a cookie. There’s going to be some sort of a pleasurable response to eating a cookie, and that can even be the anticipation of the pleasure that eating the cookie will provide. This all has to do with dopamine, the reward hormone.

Also, when it comes to emotional eating, or eating in response to an uncomfortable emotion, the eating behavior is done to avoid the uncomfortable emotion, so that’s the avoidance of the discomfort. That’s the reward. Another reward is to conserve energy or save energy.

This can show up as getting takeout food instead of cooking dinner. This can save you time and energy. It can also show up as increasing energy consumption, meaning eating something that’s high calorie, such as cookies or ice cream, instead of broccoli.

Now that we have the behavior sequence, the cue or prompt or trigger, the behavior that’s easy to do, and the reward, the nighttime snacking habit occurs because of repetition of this behavior sequence, but also repetition in the same time place or circumstance.

So, nighttime snacking means that time is definitely involved, right? But also, if you were doing the behavior sequence in the same place, meaning maybe the living room on the couch, or in the same circumstance, such as as soon as you turn on Netflix, then it’s more likely that this repeated behavior will become an actual habit.

The good news is, this can all be broken. I can help you with this. It takes addressing these components, so that all of these links are broken. Since you need all of these things to go in a certain sequence and then be repeated in the same context, to break a nighttime snacking habit, you need to weaken these links until they’re broken. And so we would address the different components, so that this occurs.

And if you fear that you’ll just form the habit again, don’t worry, because since you become very knowledgeable about this and learn the skills to break the eating habit, and then get to witness yourself actually breaking the eating habit, you will feel confident that this won’t be an issue for you again.

And even in the worst-case scenario, if it did become a habit again, you know exactly how to break it. You’d actually more likely catch on to it before it even became a habit again, and stop it in its tracks. You’re confident that you have the know how plus the tools or the skills to either prevent the habit from occurring again, or to break the habit.

Alright my career women, to get help with breaking your nighttime snacking habit, or any other eating habits that are really bothering you, contributing to health issues or contributing to weight gain, I can help you. Let’s talk about it via a free 60-minute consultation. You can easily book that free consult in the episode description If you’re listening from a podcast app, or on the episode page if you’re listening right from my website.

Take care and I’ll talk with you next week.